Michael Cruz

Professor Encinias

Community Event

29 November 2022

NBCUniversal Latino Business Association Event

On Tuesday November 29th, I attended the Latino Business Association event here at

CSUN The meeting was called “NBCUniversal Panel”. This meeting featured Latino/Chicano

students and their experiences in the film industry. This community event immediately caught

my attention because I myself am a Latino student studying in the entertainment industry. In this

event, four NBCUniversal workers named Lucia Cortez, Katherine Ramos, Jorge Guevara, and

Jose Cedillo talked about getting into this industry as a Latino student. Lucia and Jorge’s stories

caught my attention the most because I related to what they had to say. Lucia’s story was difficult

but satisfying because she talked about the difficulty of earning a job in this industry. She said

what matters most is experience and personality. Lucia said in order for her to become successful

in this industry, she had to work well with others. This is more difficult than it sounds because

there are people in the film business who are racist to Latinos. This however didn’t stop Lucia.

She knew this is what she wanted to do with her life. She wasn’t lazy when it came to achieving

this job. Every time she had the opportunity to work hard and gain experience, she took it.

Jorge’s story interested me because he received a marketing job in this industry with zero

experience! He mentioned how he took a severe risk and lied on his resume. During his job

application, they asked him if he had marketing experience. He said yes! He took a risk not many
people are willing to take. The risk he took was he had to learn about marketing on the job! To

summarize why he brought this point of view, he said if he was able to take a risk, we can take a

risk too! He mentioned how in life if we want to achieve our dream, we have to take a risk. We

can’t always play it safe. This event was significant for the Latino community because it appears

that popular movie industries such as NBCUnivesal are hiring more Latino students. Even

though several Latinos are getting hired to work in the film business, each Latino student always

starts from the bottom unlike other races such as caucasians. Even though this is a bit

discriminatory, the pros about Latinos starting from the bottom in this industry is that according

to these guestspeakers, they were able to show their bosses that they are able to work hard with

what they are given. Overall, more Latino students are getting jobs in this industry.

NBCUniversal was kind enough to send Latino workers to CSUN to tell us Latinos are becoming

recognized. I am delighted to attend this community event because it taught me that as a Latino

student in the film/television program, I must never give up in accomplishing my goals. I learned

that the film industry needs more Latino workers to create content in both English and Spanish.

We Latinos are who shape popular industries such as Paramount, NBC, etc.